Samsung may have just revealed a new Android N feature: stock stylus support. On Samsung’s developer page for its Look API, Samsung notes than the majority of the Look API S Pen features “will be deprecated in Android N”. The question must then be asked: why would Samsung remove key software features for its stylus unless stylus support was about to baked into stock Android?

On the Look API page, Samsung lists three S Pen-specific features out of four that will be deprecated in N: AirButton, SmartClip and WritingBuddy. One other feature for the edge display – Edge Immersive Mode – will also be deprecated in N. While the deprecation of existing features in future Android releases is hardly confirmation of stock Android stylus support, it’s certainly an interesting possibility.

Rumors of stylus support in stock Android have been around for a while, but considering Samsung is the only company doing a good job with a stylus (with the possible exception of Nvidia), it seemed unlikely. Of course, Samsung sells way more Android phones and tablets than anyone else, so adding a stock Android feature for Samsung alone isn’t necessarily out of the question. Better stylus support would benefit not only the Galaxy Note phone series but also Samsung’s Galaxy Note tablets.

See also:

Samsung has quietly fixed the Galaxy Note 5 S Pen issue

January 19, 2016

Google has already committed to providing better tablet support in Android N, so adding Android stylus support would be a significant step in that direction. Taking popular features from OEMs and third-party developers and rolling them into stock Android is hardly anything new. Themes, heads-up notifications, multi-window, fingerprint recognition, power saving mode, lock screen notifications, all of these appeared elsewhere before they appeared in stock Android.

According to the Korean media, Huawei has been mulling over development of a new super-size smartphone, complete with its own stylus technology. Huawei is said to have been in talks with a couple of digital stylus manufacturers in the country, implying that the growing Chinese smartphone company could launch a competitor to Samsung’s world renowned Galaxy Note series in the future.

Apparently, Huawei originally approached Wacom, the company that developed the S Pen in conjunction with Samsung. However, the two were unable to reach an agreement, as there is presumably some exclusivity deal regarding S Pen technology. Huawei has now managed to find a competitor that can produce a digitizer with a price and performance that will “compete with Wacom’s products”.

We don’t have any other information about who is said to be producing the stylus, the type of features that Huawei may have planned, or what the smartphone’s hardware could be like. Huawei has previously considered adding a stylus to its Ascend Mate products, so the feature will most likely be implemented one of Huawei’s higher-end models.

If the rumor turns out to be true, we still don’t know for certain if Huawei will end up putting a stylus into a future product. Although, such a feature might make a nice companion to the Force Touch technology that Huawei unveiled just a few weeks ago. The company has also recently been rumored to be picking up some of Samsung’s curved AMOLED display technology, possibly to use in a smartphone due for release in early 2016.

Are you still waiting for a real competitor to Samsung’s Galaxy Note range and could Huawei pull off such a phone?

A new Samsung patent has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office which shows that the company has been working on an automatically ejectable touch pen system for its Galaxy Note series of smartphones. Although far from confirmation that such a design will be making its way into future products, it’s an interesting look at the type of features that Samsung is thinking about.

Driving right on into the patent, it appears that the ejection system makes use of small electromagnets, both within the stylus and the docking slot, to push the pen up and out of the handset when required.

Two magnets are used inside the handset with the same polarity as the magnet in the pen, to push it away from the handset, rather than having the user manually have to dig it out. The second magnet has the opposite polarity, so the pen with tend to protrude from the end of the handset without flying out and potentially getting lost.

The patent also suggests that the ejection method would be tied into software, as the design has sensors that can detect when the pen is ejected from the phone. This would then display a message to the user to inform them that the stylus was loose.

“Since it is possible to automatically eject the touch pen only with a simple manipulation and/or command, it is easy to manipulate the electronic device with one hand, and since a separate locking device for confining the touch pen isn’t needed, it is possible to enhance the usage convenience of the electronic device.”

Furthermore, Samsung’s patent shows a new locking mechanism to keep the stylus in place when not required. There’s a small motor and arm lock located inside the device which hooks into a groove around the edge of the pen. Again, this suggests that the unlocking mechanism would be software based, perhaps allowing the user to eject the pen with a voice command, swipe action, or button press.

The real question is whether this design is actually more convenient for users, and it’s probably something that existing Galaxy Note users would take some getting used to. This is certainly a feature of convenience rather than necessity, but an auto-eject pen does sounds quite cool.

The Bottom Line

Alcatel OneTouch has produced a fantastic phone in terms of its design, display and functionality. However the battery life might not be good enough for some.

7.9

With the huge success of the Galaxy Note, which is now in its fourth iteration, and the arrival of the Nexus 6, it seems that devices with 6 inch (or thereabouts) displays are becoming mainstream. But the Galaxy Note 4, Huawei Ascend Mate 7 and the Nexus 6 (all winners of our Editor’s Choice Award) aren’t the only 6 inch phones around. One very interesting alternative is the Alcatel Onetouch Hero 2.

The Alcatel brand is best known in Europe, mainly because it originates from France. In 2004 Alcatel entered into a joint venture with TCL, a Chinese electronics giant, to create Alcatel Mobile Phones. In time Alcatel sold its part in the venture, however the name lives on in Alcatel Onetouch.

The Hero 2 was announced in September of this year, it has a 6 inch full 1080p HD display, a 13 megapixel camera, 2GB of RAM, a 3100 mAh battery, and comes with a stylus. I received a Hero 2 a few days ago and I have been playing with it ever since, this is what I discovered.

The design of the Hero 2 is superb. From its aluminium body to its vibrant 6 inch display, the Hero 2 feels slim, stylish and friendly. Personally, I didn’t think I would ever say that about a 6 inch smartphone. For me a phone with a 5 inch display has always been the limit, I could accept a 5.5 inch display if pressured, but I was comfortable with 5 inch display devices. However the Hero 2 has gone a long way to convert me. The bezels and the top/bottom spaces are minimal, which means there is as much room as possible for the display.

The device has some pre-installed apps which are designed specifically for the stylus.

The sides of the phone are aluminium while the back is made of plastic. On the right side is micro SD card tray, the volume rocker and the power button. On the bottom edge are two speaker grills, the micro USB port, and the stylus holder. There is nothing on the left hand side save for the SIM card tray. On the top is the headphone jack and the IR blaster. The left hand side is intentionally sparse as it leaves room for the MagicFlip covers.

On the back is the slightly protruding camera lens, the flash and a special connector for the MagicFlip covers. The back of the phone doesn’t attract fingerprints, however if your fingers are at all greasy then smudges can appear.

The stylus is easily accessible and works well with the display. The device has some pre-installed apps which are designed specifically for the stylus, including Sketch Mate and Fast Maths. The former is a note taking app and the latter a kind of calculator that recognizes handwritten sums.

Several different covers are available for the Hero 2. Known as MagicFlip covers they come in two categories, dumb and smart. The dumb ones are simple flip covers which use a magnetic to clip onto the left side of the phone. The smarter covers use the same magnetic clip mechanism however they all use with the special connector. This connector allows the phone to interact with the cover. For example, one cover has a LED display which shows the time and various notifications.

The display on the Her0 2 is a pleasure to behold. The TFT, full HD, IPS display has a resolution of 1080 x 1920 pixels. This translates into a pixel density of 367 ppi. The colors are vibrant and the display is bright. The display is built using a One Glass Solution (OGS) which helps make the Hero 2 thinner than I was expecting. At just 7.9mm, it is 2.2mm thinner than the Nexus 6. The display is protected by Dragontrail glass which allows the glass to be as thin as possible while offering scratch resistance and hardness. The glass is coated with an Oleophobic layer to reduce fingerprint marks.

The choice of the MediaTek octa-core MT8392 is interesting for this device. MediaTek’s octa-core range is often found in low- and mid-range phones due to its price/performance ratio. The MT8392 houses 8 Cortex-A7 cores and a quad-core Mali-450MP GPU. Clocked at 2.0Ghz, the MT8392 is probably the fastest Cortex-A7 based processor available on the market. For apps that perform lots of simultaneous tasks (i.e. with lots of threads) the performance of the MT8392 is excellent. For apps which are singled threaded, the slower performance of the Cortex-A7 (compared to Cortex-A15, for example) will show, however since the processor is running at 2.0Ghz, “slow” is a relative term!

The Hero 2’s AnTuTu scores are good at 29725. This makes the device on par with the HTC One (M7). For Epic Citadel, the demo app for the Unreal 3D engine, the Hero 2 managed 50.2 frames per second (fps) on the High quality setting, strangely the fps was lower in High Performance mode.

It is often bandied about the Internet that MediaTek processors have problems with GPS. This may be true anecdotally, however in this case it is far from the truth. The GPS in the Hero 2 works perfectly and can get a lock indoors and outdoors without any problems.

Unfortunately the weakest aspect of the Hero 2 is its battery. Although a 3100 mAh unit should be good enough to keep the Hero 2 powered through a working day, my testing has found that you may need to plug in the phone for a boosting charge sometime during the day.

I ran my customary set of tests: YouTube streaming, Epic Citadel, and playing music from Google Play Music. My Epic Citadel test showed that the phone will handle about 2.75 hours of intensive 3D gaming. Simpler 2D games will likely run for much longer. YouTube will work for around four hours on a full charge, while streaming non-cached music from Google over 4G will last around 15 hours.

During the course of a slow Sunday and on into Monday the device gave me 1d and 3h of battery life with 3.5 hours of screen time. All tests were performed with the screen on half brightness, with Wi-Fi and sync enabled.

The phone has all the standard connectivity options like dual-band Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g/n), Bluetooth, NFC, 2G GSM, 3G, and 4G LTE. The Her0 2 comes in two variants, the 8030B and the 8030Y. Both have the same 2G and 3G bands (GSM: 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz, 3G: 850 / 900 / 1900 / 2100 MHz), which basically gives you worldwide 2G and 3G coverage (with the possible exception of T-Mobile in the USA). However the two models do vary on which LTE bands they support. The 8030B supports LTE 700 / 1700 / 1900 / 2100 / 2600 / 1800, which covers places like the USA and Canada, while the 8030Y supports LTE 800 / 900 / 1800 / 2100 / 2600, which is for Europe, Asia and the Middle East. It is most likley that you will get this phone through your carrier and they will obviously provide you with the right version.

The 13.1 megapixel camera on this phone is excellent, and the experience is enhanced by the great 6 inch display. Photos are taken quickly and overall the color reproduction is good. Also the phone doesn’t tend to over expose shots, something that other (lesser) smartphones often do.

The included camera app is simple to use and yet has a whole host of features including HDR, Sports mode, and even a built-in QR code scanner. There is also a manual mode which lets you change just about every setting including shutter speed and ISO.

The best thing is to judge for yourself. Where I live it is now Fall and Winter is almost here, this means there aren’t many flowers out and there are lots of leaves on the ground, but I hope this selection of photos is useful:

The Hero 2 comes with Android 4.4.2 with a lightly customized skin from Alacatel Onetouch. The launcher uses its own graphics and icons to good effect and the overall UI design is pleasing. The customization is light and there was never a moment when I thought the UI was slowing down the phone. The notification blind is nicely designed with the background showing the screen behind it using a semi-transparent effect. The settings page is black-on-white rather than white-on-black as with stock Android, however the redesign is pleasing and likable. Overall the UI moves fast, flows freely and enhances the overall experience.

Alcatel Onetouch include a number of pre-installed apps, some to take advantage of the stylus like Sketch Mate and Fast Math, while others are just bundled third party apps like Deezer and Kobo. Peel Smart Remote is the app for the built-in IR blaster. With it you can control your TV, DVD player, Air Conditioning unit, and so on. My TV set is from a fairly obscure manufacturer, however the app managed to find it and I was able to controll the TV’s basic functions without any problem.

Another neat trick that the Hero 2 has is the ability to run some apps in a split screen mode. Split Screen is activated from within the settings and allows you to have one app on the top half of the screen and another app no the bottom. There is also a slider (actually a blue dot) which allows you to change the proportions of the two windows. Not all apps are compatible with the split screen mode, however it does work with lots of popular ones including Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Chrome, YouTube and WhatsApp.

The device also comes with a special version of Cross DJ which has been customized by Mixvibes. You can also buy the specially designed MagicFlip DJ cover which works together with Cross DJ. If music is your thing, then this is quite a useful setup.

Alcatel has its own apps store, know as the “App Center”, however the Hero 2 also comes with full Google Play support and all of the normal Google apps are available.

Overall the Hero 2 is a great device. The design makes it seem less of a huge phone than it really is. The 6 inch display is clear, sharp and a pleasure to use. The processor package is fast, and the UI is always responsive. The 13.1 megapixel camera is a joy to use, and the picture quality is good for a mobile phone. The software is nice including the pre-bundled apps, while the custom UI only adds to the overall experience. The only reason the phone didn’t score much higher, is the battery. If you are the kind of person that is always near a USB port (for example at work) then the battery life won’t be a problem, but if you need your phone to last a long time between charges then this might not be the phone for you.

Stepping up their mobile offerings, Wacom has just launched their full Bamboo Paper app for Android, Windows and Android powered Kindle devices. Previously an iPad only app, Bamboo Paper offers the same note taking capabilities as their smaller Bamboo Paper memo Android app, with added tools for journaling, drawing, sketching, writing and more. Bamboo Paper is currently free in the Google Play Store.

You may be familiar with Wacom for their PC connected pen tablets, if so, you’ll understand that their goal is to provide as many of the same drawing, doodling, sketching, annotating, writing and more tools and the overall experience to your mobile device. As such, the app is designed to work with many of the Wacom stylus pens out there. If you don’t know what Wacom is all about, check out their website for more info.

As an introductory promotion, for a limited time, Wacom is providing free downloads of many of their premium writing and drawing tools for the app. They don’t say how long the promotion runs for, so don’t hesitate to get in there, if you’re interested.

For my couple minutes messing with the basic operation, I managed to attack an imported image from my device with various pens and brushes in various colors. Please forgive my lack of artistic ability. The first thing I noticed was that there are limited colors for use. Maybe there is a full RGB color chooser in there somewhere, but I looked and could not find it. Without the ability to customize colors, I fear that this app would not suffice for many professional users.

In their delay to launch on Android, Wacom enters a market filled with many great drawing, sketching and doodling apps. It’s an oldie, but check out this best drawing apps on Android post we did in 2012. Like I said, Wacom is a little late to the game here, it’s a good thing that Bamboo Paper is a solid app with a good amount of functionality for most users.

Having you been looking for your first, or a new drawing, writing, sketching, note taking, doodling, annotating and more app?

Wearables have been the talk of the town this year, and it seems that LG has plenty of ideas for this growing market.

@evleaks has come across a couple of images showing off an LG wrist bracelet, which also doubles as a stylus for touchscreen displays. This isn’t the first piece of wearable technology from LG, the company also announced its LifeBand Touch fitness tracker at this year’s CES. The device won our “Best Android Accessory” award at the event.

If this device seems somewhat familiar to you, it’s because it matches up with one of LG’s patents that was spotted back in February. Not only do the two devices look identical, but the patent also covers the stylus functionality which can be seen in the latest picture. Essentially, this appears to be a flexible “slap” wristband which has a capacitive stylus tip at the end.

Further on in the Evleaks tweet, @russellholly points out that LG isn’t exactly keep the device under wraps, in fact the company appears to be handing them out. If you don’t like the bright colours shown off above, the stylus also comes in white and black options.

Interestingly, the original patent includes some additional features which can’t be seen on any of these images, including a small touch screen, which I assume is flexible, at one end of the device, a range of different sensors, and some form of wireless connectivity to pair it with a smartphone, probably Bluetooth. Perhaps LG is working on another fitness device or “smart wristband”, or maybe these features will forever remain as ideas on a patent.

Whilst there’s no indication that such a device will ever go on sale, could you see yourself wearing a stylus?

The upcoming Samsung Galaxy S5 may feature improved gesture recognition and support for passive stylus input thanks to an advanced touch controller supplied by Synaptics.

Stifel, a major financial services firm, raised its target share price for Synaptics yesterday, and told investors that the company secured a deal with Samsung to put its new touch controller in the Galaxy S5. This isn’t a surprise, given that Synaptics, one of the largest suppliers of human interface solutions, has supplied touch controllers for both the Galaxy S4 and the Galaxy Note 3 last year.

According to ETNews, a Korean IT news portal, the new controller from Synaptics will improve the recognition of hover gestures and bring support for passive stylus input to Samsung’s high-end devices in 2014.

On the Galaxy S4, Samsung introduced Air View, which lets you hover your finger over the screen to interact with interface elements, much in the way you would hover the mouse cursor over an item to see its description on your PC.

The new controller from Synaptics will make Air View more accurate and reliable, and increase the range of detection, according to ETNews, citing industry sources.

The new controller will let Samsung equip the Galaxy S5 with support for passive styluses. Passive styluses don’t communicate with the device, the way an active stylus like the S Pen of the Note series does, acting instead like an extension of your finger. Synaptics’ touchscreen panel can recognize styluses with tips of down to 2.5pi, allowing for finer input and better handwriting recognition.

Looking at Synaptics’ products, one controller that fits the description is the ClearPad 3350, first introduced on the Nexus 5.

We can’t say for sure that the S5 will feature passive stylus support, but that seems a strong possibility at this point, considering Samsung’s past efforts to differentiate its flagships through new forms of input. The latest official info pegs the release of the S5 by April, and it’s likely that more and more details will leak by then.

It looks that Russian tech blogger EldarMurtazin was spot on when he reported back in January that Nvidia would offer white label services to small partners in the tablet market.

The first result of the program is the Nvidia Tegra Note: a 7-inch reference tablet powered by Tegra 4, that Nvidia will sell through its partners at prices starting from $199. But before we discuss the relatively peculiar way Nvidia is going to market the Tegra Note, let’s cover the basics.

The spec sheet above paints the picture of a reasonably capable device, especially for the $199 price tag touted by Nvidia. In addition, Nvidia baked a few interesting features inside the Tegra Note:

Nvidia DirectStylus – DirectStylus is a passive stylus technology, that detects various types of stylus tips based on their shape and allows user to change the width of the stroke by varying the pressure. Nvidia claims DirectStylus should deliver the same results as a $20 active input stylus. Some partner versions of Nvidia may offer the Tegra Note bundled with brush and chisel stylus tips.

Chimera camera technology – Nvidia bills Chimera as the “world’s first mobile computational photography architecture”, which simply means that the Tegra 4 processor is able to process the image from the camera in real time, to achieve effects such as always on HDR photography, 100fps slow-motion, and HD panoramas. The Note exclusively packs the Camera Awesome app, which was iOS-only until now.

PureAudio – Nvidia claims that the Tegra Note delivers the “widest frequency range in a tablet” through the front-facing stereo speakers with bass-reflex.

TegraZone gaming and Bluetooth-enabled game controller mode – unsurprisingly, the Tegra Note is Tegra Zone ready; the device can be used as a game controller via Bluetooth, similarly to the Shield.

Tegra Note price, availability, and partners

Nvidia will have a contract manufacturer build the Tegra Note and offer smaller partners around the world the possibility to simply put their name on the Note and sell it as their own device. This model, commonly known as white label service, means that Nvidia will notsell the Tegra Note itself.

To avoid having multiple partners compete against each other with the same device, Nvidia selected a limited number of companies that will sell their Note variant. These are:

Using a Tegra 4-powered 7-inch tablet, Huang has used a normal stylus to draw and write at different levels of thickness, depending on the pressure he was applying, as you can see in the image below. Furthermore, he showed that the bottom of the stylus could even perform as an eraser.

According to Engadget, sensitivity was excellent, giving a lot of hope for the technology’s future.

Nvidia says that the innovation should help save on battery life and also promises to detect curved lines in a better fashion. The technology will only work on Nvidia’s own Tegra 4 hardware, combined with its DirectTouch technology. The latter moves some of the load of processing the touch input from the controller to the processor.

Unfortunately, the company hasn’t mentioned yet when we’ll see the new technology in a commercial product.

An all-new app created by an XDA Developer is here and will make things a lot easier for a Samsung smartphone users who have an S Pen. With SPenBoard, users can now switch keyboards with ease and are at liberty to choose a keyboard app that sports handwriting recognition and/or the popular gesture-based typing depending on the movement of the stylus.

To make things a lot easier and avoid the cumbersome and tedious process of changing keyboards manually, LegendK95 created SPenBoard Switcher. But in order for it to work, your device should be endowed with the capability of detecting the removal of the stylus, which would automatically allow you to change from any other keyboard to the one stock S Pen-friendly Samsung keyboard to enjoy specific stylus functions.

You can go to Samsung’s website to learn more about the new revolutionary tool that does away with outdated input methods. The S Pen is far more advanced than a conventional stylus and provides accuracy and speed, without compromising on comfort. You could be surprised that you are using almost an actual pen as the app lets you detect the pressure applied and adjust it accordingly.

The app has already been tested on Samsung Galaxy Note 2 devices and should be compatible with any other S Pen-enabled device as well.